Yuri

Yuri (Yuri LUX GmbH), founded in 2019 and headquartered in Friedrichshafen, Germany (with Luxembourg operations), is a space biotech infrastructure company offering Lab-as-a-Service for pharmaceutical, biotech, and life science researchers who want to conduct microgravity experiments on the International Space Station — providing standardized modular automated bioreactors and end-to-end experiment management services that eliminate the traditional complexity of accessing ISS research facilities.

Yuri's core product is a compact, automated bioreactor cassette designed to fit within standard ISS experiment racks (NanoRacks, KUBIK, BioLab) and autonomously execute cell culture protocols in microgravity without requiring astronaut intervention beyond cassette loading and unloading. The automated design is critical because astronaut time on the ISS costs approximately $2 million per hour, making hands-on experiment participation economically prohibitive for most pharmaceutical research applications. Yuri's cassettes handle media exchange, pH monitoring, temperature control, and imaging automatically according to pre-programmed protocols synchronized with the ISS schedule.

With 156 laboratory missions launched to the ISS by 2025, Yuri has built the operational track record and logistical expertise — integration with Northrop Grumman Cygnus, SpaceX Dragon, and Axiom commercial crew manifests — to reliably deliver time-sensitive biological samples (cells, organisms, protein solutions) to ISS, execute precisely timed experiments in orbit, and return samples for post-flight analysis in the same mission manifest. This end-to-end biological logistics capability is Yuri's competitive differentiation beyond hardware provision.

The Luxembourg Space Agency signed a €4 million contract with Yuri to conduct in-space manufacturing research in pharmaceutical protein crystallization, cell biology, and materials science — reflecting Luxembourg's deliberate strategy of positioning itself as a regulatory and investment hub for the in-space economy. Yuri competes with Bioserve Space Technologies, NanoRacks (Voyager Space), and Axiom Space commercial lab services.